First Chapter

'Beautiful Bodies'

Published: June 16, 2002

(Page 2 of 10)

Tonight, she was facing a social challenge, but it didn't truly daunt her. If she looked at the logistics &#151; that she had to prepare a party in less than an hour &#151; she would have to admit defeat in advance. She was too happy to concentrate on details; her euphoria separated her even from herself. In her mind, she was back in Colorado. She was thinking not of what she had to do, but what she had just done. The kissing, the holding...she saw, in her mind's eye, his face, his chest &#151; to which she had said a playful good-bye, ducking her head under his sweater as they sat in his parked car at the airport. She could still feel his skin, pick up the scent, and taste him on her tongue. She finally understood everything she'd ever read of magic spells and cloud nine.

Should she tell her friends about the weekend? Or, better to keep the secret, sweet and private, to herself? If she spoke the words aloud, would the spell disintegrate into the atmosphere, like the vapor rising from the gutter grate?

Stop thinking about this, she told herself. Get the apartment in order, cook the food, uncork the wine, light the candles. Her pace quickened, in step with her thoughts: get upstairs, turn on the oven, clear the worst of the debris. She recalled the mess upstairs &#151; her laundry on the bed, all her research materials on the table and started to laugh.

I am doomed, she told herself, with an inner giggle. It was as if the gods had conspired. Not only had the weather not &quot;cooperated&quot; &#151; it was now deteriorating. The ice storm that had delayed her return flight to New York by a day had now rejoined her here. The wind picked up as she walked; the forecast was that snow would follow.

Jessie fought the river wind as she made her way on the long, final block west. The wind was so powerful it blew her one step back, for every two she took forward. A few times, she had to stop, to rebalance her shopping bags. Her hands gripped the sacks, heavy with Australian red wine, Pellegrino water, the five Cornish hens, and ten pounds of Yukon gold potatoes.

Oh why had she bought such heavy food? Why potatoes? Most of the women were dieting; they might get angry at the sight of the potatoes. They might identify with the potatoes. At the moment, Jessie herself felt not unlike a potato, bundled in her beige down coat, bulky and lumpy, her head sticking up like a knobby growth.

She had walked a good twelve blocks from Dean & DeLuca. Her boots had failed to be waterproof and now her feet felt like the potatoes too, only frozen. As she paused, one shopping bag slipped, and the bottom hit the slush on the sidewalk. The sodden paper gave way, and the hens slipped out, five goose-pimpled poultry corpses, falling into the gutter of Hudson Street. Jessie cursed as she tried to retrieve the hens. More groceries spilled into the street. The three so-called blood oranges that she had intended to serve macerated in cassis rolled toward a sewer opening. Oh, what had she been thinking to have a dinner party at her apartment? Why hadn't they all just chosen a restaurant? But that had seemed much too impersonal for this evening's occasion.

An hour earlier, she had hit the ground running. She'd dropped her suitcase off at the loft, then taken the airport cab straight to Dean & DeLuca to buy as many prepared foods as possible. Oh why had she gotten ambitious at the food counter? Why hadn't she just gone ahead and bought the meal, precooked?

As she crawled on the pavement, trying to retrieve all the food that had spilled, Jessie recalled her rationale. She wanted tonight to be different, so special...beyond catering, past takeout. She would cook every item herself, to ensure its perfection. That had seemed more festive somehow, more personal. It was just as easy to roast the hens as buy them already cooked and costing ten times as much. Those itsy-bitsy hens &#151; it seemed as if the smaller they were, the more they cost.

I can do an apricot glaze, she had told herself, but she hadn't answered the unasked question: when? When would she have time? Then, of course, she didn't dare wait for delivery; she'd better get to roasting right away. She'd counted on getting a taxicab, forget the cost &#151; it was a bad and also important night. Time was all that mattered. She'd stood at the curb, flailing for a cab, and of course, there had been none. So here she was at 5:30 P.M., with uncooked little chickens, going up to a semiclean apartment, with her five best friends expected in an hour.

It was impossible. They would understand of course &#151; they were her friends. They had known one another for so long, seen one another's unretouched moments. This was the old Theresa House gang, her first friends in the city. They all &quot;went back&quot;; they'd seen each other naked, sick, crying, vomiting. But that didn't mean she should strive for such cinema verit&#233; tonight. This was supposed to be a festive occasion &#151; it would be unpleasant to sit there, in the disorder.